Local hair products rope in the cash

The sector is growing between 7 and 10 percent a year

THE country’s cosmetic industry is showing substantial foreign investment in the local black hair care and beauty market, and has a retail value of about R25 billion, the Department of Trade and Industry said yesterday.

Department spokesperson Bongani Lukhele said the value of the cosmetic industry had been estimated at R25bn at retail level, and R18bn at the manufacturing level.

The sector is growing between 7 and 10 percent a year.

In 2010, the cosmetic and personal care industry accounted for about twothirds of the total market.

Exports of products, including hair care and skin care, amounted to R2.8bn of total exports, while imports were worth about R4bn.

This came to light as pupils at Pretoria High School for Girls this week clashed with teachers after being told to straighten their hair.

The school’s code of conduct stipulates how pupils should wear their hair, and does not allow for them to embrace it in its natural form.

Research director at the Human Science Research Council, and associate professor of sociology at UCT, Sharlene Swartz, said the school’s code of conduct was a throwback to the country’s colonial history and promoted white beauty standards.

Swartz congratulated the pupils and said everyone needed to be in solidarity with the girls.

“It’s fantastic that we have 13-year-old girls doing what they are doing. The rules need to be revisited because this still stems from apartheid,” Swartz said.

There are also psychological impacts the rules have on pupils, Swartz said, as this made black pupils feel inferior.

“It’s racist. The rules imply that natural black hair is not beautiful. This is ensuring white standards of beauty remain the ideal.”

Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said he would investigate allegations of racism at the school after pupils were allegedly subjected to verbal abuse and discrimination.

The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation welcomed the intervention by the Gauteng Department of Education at the school.

The foundation’s youth co-ordinator, Busisiwe Nkosi, said the incident showed South Africa was not a transformed society and more effort had to be made to tackle institutionalised racism.

The foundation visited the school yesterday, speaking to former and current pupils and several relatives. University students also picketed.

“We were both shocked and outraged at the incidents of racism that we were told took place at the school. It was inspiring to see, though, the manner in which the pupils fearlessly took on the system that discriminated against them.

“It was similarly encouraging to see university students across race and gender lines protesting in support of the schoolgirls,” Nkosi said. francesca.villette@inl.co.za

@FrancescaJaneV

I WANT to push you out of your comfort zone, forcing you to be realistic. In South Africa today we question if the sessions of the TRC achieved what they were expected to – reconcile South Africans. Yes, Julius Malema talks about this a lot and, instead of us digesting the message, we tend to focus on who is talking. The recent local government elections must be an eye-opener to all of us, or we will all burn.

We cannot boast about having the most advanced constitution in the world and yet we fail in making it inclusive of all our people, in something that is used on a daily basis, and thus reviving so many horror memories of our past.

“Ek is gebore en groot geword in die Vrystaat. Ek is ook ‘n Afrikaner” and a number of my friends and colleagues have given me counter-debates on this issue and, receptively, I understand; but we need not look at this from a racial perspective, or who has done what, but in a humanitarian perspective. What I propose is the change of the Afrikaans words of the national anthem to be representative of all South Africans (as the first step, the better thing would be to change the national anthem as a whole).

The South African government adopted both songs as our national anthems in 1994, and these were performed at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration. They were merged in 1997 to form the current anthem. The new English lyrics were adapted from the last four lines of the first stanza of Die Stem van Suid-Afrika, with the changes made to reflect hope in post-apartheid South African society. What has been done here is to combine two pieces of evidence of our horrible past, making them our national anthem. Surely this should raise resistance when only one part is attacked and called to be changed, while the other is left untouched. We should not be a nation of hypocrites.

The other side of this debate over the past 22 years, the inclusion in part of Die Stem in our national anthem, has been discussed extensively. Certain parties are trying to cultivate political capital, using this issue as it has recently been brought to the centre of public discourse during coalition discussions between the ANC and EFF. Strange tactics and manipulations are used, all because we are not attending to the splashes of our past that still exist.

There is also an additional, often overlooked, reason why not only Die Stem but the entire anthem should be changed, as I have mentioned earlier.

Asking South Africans, regardless of their respective beliefs, to sing an anthem which is essentially a prayer is entirely inconsistent with the principles upon which our secular democracy was founded.

Section 9(2) of the constitution asserts that the state may neither discriminate directly nor indirectly against anyone on the grounds of conscience, beliefs or religion, among others. As religiosity continues to decline across South Africa, keeping Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika as our national anthem violates the rights of an ever-increasing number of South Africans. We have seen the current government abolishing the use of prayer in public schools’ assemblies, but why the inconsistency?

While the initial combination of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and Die Stem into a hybrid anthem was an understandable compromise between two peoples who sought to come together after centuries of separateness, we have reached a point where we are no longer primarily defined by those compromises.

The day has yet again dawned for us to come together and develop a new anthem which, firstly, embraces the immense diversity of our society and, secondly, inspires a sense of patriotism in every South African. An anthem which unites us as one people under one flag.

The time taken for stalling will cost us dearly. Seën ons mense hier in Afrika Laat sy mag tot in die hemel reik Hoor ons roep van Afrika Seen ons hier in Afrika Kinders van Afrika Igor Scheurkogel Odendaalsrus